[1] Later that same day, three men were arrested - 50-year-old Shinkichi Sakurada, 48-year-old Tadao Hitomi and Bunshiro Fugino, who operated a "private hospital" on 629 East Cordova Street.
[3] These allegations were not without merit, as over the last two years, twenty or more of Sakurada's "patients" or people associated with him had either died under suspicious circumstances; from sudden illnesses such tuberculosis and undefined stomach ailments, or had simply vanished without a trace.
[6] In the aftermath of the arrests, the city's license department was criticized for not shutting down the hospital sooner, with their response being that since the employees could not read Japanese, they had assumed it was just a normal household.
[9] By the end of the trial, Hitomi took the stand and described in gruesome detail how he and Sakurada carried out Watanabe's murder, claiming that he had been egged on by the former to keep striking him even when the wounded man was screaming in agony.
Neither man had final words, with Sakurada spending most of the night prior to his execution praying with his spiritual adviser while Hitomi spent his time sleeping.